SOUTH BEND, IN – If what North Carolina is experiencing this basketball season wasn’t so cruel it would almost be laughable by now.

Seriously, you just couldn’t make this up if you tried.

Buzzer beaters, last-second shots, injuries galore and, to the fault of the Tar Heels, a bevy of blown leads, have marked what has become the most bizarre season in UNC basketball history.

If the last-second loss courtesy of a Virginia 3-pointer Saturday night wasn’t the exclamation mark on the season, Nate Laszewski’s three to lift Notre Dame to a 77-76 win here at the Joyce Center on Monday night was.

!!!

That’s six games now in the last six weeks in which the Heels lost at basically the buzzer or allowed a basket in the final couple of seconds to send into overtime a game they eventually lost. It’s happened seven total times if you include the ends of regulation and overtime versus Duke. All since Jan. 11. That’s 37 days.

Yet, instead of focusing on all that went wrong here, let’s take a cue from some of the players.

To their credit, and perhaps in an effort to wade through the heavy brush that has become this season, they’re making themselves see positives, and despite the outcomes, there have been some.

In the last two games, the aforementioned last-second losses, the Tar Heels did plenty right. They played winning basketball for most of both contests, but victory somehow found ways to elude them.

So, to heck with dwelling on the negatives.

“At this point, we’ve got to look at the positive,” freshman guard Cole Anthony said. “We see how good we can be. We’re up on a team that’s above .500 in league play now, we came to their home court and were ready to beat them. You got to look at the positives.

“We’re getting better, we’re getting better. That’s all I can say.”

As difficult as it may be to actually see this through the smothering fog of this season, but Anthony is right. The Tar Heels have gotten better.

With the exception of the loss at Wake Forest last week, they have been in games down to the wire against some pretty good clubs. Florida State on the road and Duke at home – would anyone be shocked to see either or both at the Final Four in Atlanta?

Virginia is forging a track to the NCAAs and the Wahoos had to fight off the Heels with all their might. The Irish could sneak in, too, with Monday’s nail biter aiding their quest.

Get the drift?

The Heels do. And as surprising as it may be to learn, they aren’t having a tough time finding those snippets even with the Ls keep piling up.

“Nah, it’s not (tough),” junior Garrison Brooks said. “We see them. We’ve just got to keep working, try to get up and try to build on it, even though it’s tough.”

Some fans may sit back perplexed thinking the players need to breath fire through their noses in sheer anger as the only acceptable mindset. The Heels are past that, though, and maybe well past it.

The shock and awe of this season is so 2019 ago. The bewilderment and stress is so January ago. Now, the Heels are running on fumes, yet to their credit they are competing every night, exactly as their Hall of Fame coach is demanding.

And that’s his mantra the rest of the way.

“You’ve got two choices: You can compete your butt off or you can in the fetal position and curly up and start crying,” Roy Williams said after the game, in a press conference that included and understandable expletive. “I’m not going to frickin do that.”

This is where intensity and trying to focus on the positives meet. The Heels aren’t ignoring their many mistakes from this or any other game, but at 10-16 overall and 3-12 in the ACC, this just may be the best approach for this group to get to the finish line next month and cross it with their heads held high.

Losing stinks. Walk into that locker room after a loss like this and you’ll see. It pains these kids deeply.

But they also must soldier on, and their chosen method just might be the wisest approach.